Retirement Community
Nick and Donna met me at the gate of my secure gated motorcoach resort. Donna already knew the four digit code that would allow me to walk free. She freed me.
In about a half hour we were sitting down to eat a combination plate of barbequed ribs and chicken with french fries. It was so good, I kept thinking of how much Blessin would enjoy it.
It was after dark when we left. I do no know why sub divisions and gated communities have to have winding roads that curve around into one another instead of parallel and perpendicular roads such that every one knows which way they are going and how to get any where from any where else. The designers of Maple Leaf Resort had made it so that my orientation to anything in the community as well as any place out side it was. . .
I knew that where we had just eaten was not far. We passed one of the major meeting places on our way to their house. There was a meeting. Probably fifty golf carts were parked in parking places and along the street and up on the banks in the grass next to the shrubs. Sometimes the meetings were about serious issues like cable verses fiber optic TV and internet connections, and whether to allow motor cycles in the resort. It is a functioning democracy for the good of the retiree.
Donna immediately gave me a tour of their winter home. The winter home is equal to the summer home in every way, comfort, beauty, space. Some how the phrase we bought a house in a court in Florida had given me the image of something more temporary and less refined. One could live in either place year around. The season, the weather makes each the better place.
That’s a physical comparison.
I have only alluded to the the real description of life in Maple Leaf.
The real description is Retirement Community.
The primary means of transportation in Maple Leaf is golf cart. It is the ideal vehicle. It moves quietly. It does not take much roadway space nor parking space. It is easily kept at the speed limit, 15 mph. Golf carts are much easier to get in and out of than are automobiles.
We toured Maple Leaf. We saw a library. We saw people playing pickleball. We saw shuffle boards. We saw bocce courts. There are just about any kind of yard or lawn game you can think of available to play.
There is a place to do and learn hand crafts. There is a wood working shop with tools that would rival those Steve uses on This Old House or Ye Old Yankee Work Shop.
We traveled to the gulf of Mexico to Boca Grande on the Island of Gasparilla. We perused the museum which outlined the fishing industry’s importance and of course noted the Seminole were there prior to the time the Spanish claimed it. It is like all of the United States, land where people lived became “owned” by Europeans. Might makes right.
